Monday, April 11, 2011

The Absurdity of the Budget "Battle"

In a recent email to supporters of his Our America Initiative, Gary Johnson had the perfect analogy for the silly budget showdown between the two major parties in Congress:

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'Imagine: You make $60,000 a year; you are spending $100,000 per year. You sit down with your banker, a credit counselor, or heaven forbid, a Bankruptcy Judge to find a way out of your obvious problem. You begin the conversation by saying you know you have to cut your spending, but you and your wife can’t agree on how to do it. You want to cut $2,000, but she only wants to cut $1,000. Never mind the fact that you don’t have a $1,000 or $2,000 problem – you have a $40,000 problem.

Friends, as absurd as that conversation would be, it is precisely the debate that is going on in Washington right NOW. As we watch in amazement, Congress and the President are on the verge of forcing a government shutdown because they can’t agree on whether to cut $20 or $33 or $61 billion from a $3.8 TRILLION budget for this year – a year that is already halfway over in Federal spending terms.

And while they have this so-called showdown, the President is spending at least $300 million a week on a new war in Libya, without asking anyone.

Yes, that’s right.

We are facing a financial collapse under the weight of more than a trillion dollars in deficit spending, and Washington is pretending to wage a budget battle royale over whether to cut spending by 1% or 2%.

By any reasonable math, they need to be fighting over whether to cut 40% or 45%. That is the debate the American people wanted when they turned Congress on end in last fall’s election – and that is the conversation we need to be having.

At the rate we are going, the national debt will equal the entire GDP of the United States in about 10 years. By 2025, tax revenues will only cover interest on that debt, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – with nothing left over to pay for “discretionary” things like national defense and homeland security.

They are fiddling while Rome is burning.

It is time for some truth and some long-overdue courage.

Washington says they hear us, but they don’t seem to believe what they are hearing. If, in their newly found commitment to getting the budget under control, they can only muster the courage to cut spending by 1% or 2% -- when we have a 40% crisis, we can only conclude that they haven’t yet really gotten the message:

Make the “tough” calls, take on the real challenges of entitlements, wars we cannot afford, and hundreds of billions’ worth of programs we don’t need, and balance the budget – NOW.

You and I both know that we could cut hundreds of billions in spending without breaking a sweat or creating hardship for anyone. Yet, the politicians in Washington somehow think we are impressed by reductions that are literally rounding errors in the Federal budget.

I am working night and day and all across the country to deliver that message and give them some backbone. I am taking my experience as a Governor, of having done what needs to be done in Washington today, to people all across the nation.

And I am telling the truth to everyone who will listen, whether it is on Fox News or in a corner coffee shop. But I can’t do it alone. The Our America Initiative exists to give voice to those, like you and me, who know what the problems are, and what needs to be done. Thousands of Americans have joined us, but we need tens of thousands more – and that means we have to reach them, enlist them, and make their voices heard as well. And, of course, none of that happens without financial support.

The fight is now, the time is now – and the opportunity is now.

Your contribution, your advocacy, and your voice are what is needed, and I welcome your help in this most important effort: The effort to restore financial sanity, freedom and the personal liberty we all know to be essential to a prosperous American future.